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Memorandum
from Bolton at Home (Arms Length Management Organisation of
Key Points: · Decent Homes programme was essential but situation should not be let slide again so we would have to repeat it in 10 years. · Reliable and sufficient future resources are required to maintain stock once it has reached decency standard. · Minimum decency standards have to embrace the wider socio-economic and environmental outcomes that are essential to pace shaping · As well as delivering improved dwellings, the programme also had other outcomes. · Customers want and expect decent communities rather than just decent homes. This should cause a re-think as to what is considered a 'core' service. · Housing organisations need to evolve and be given more freedoms without them losing accountability. · The actual state of the stock has to be the basis for the funding requirement for decency regardless of standard. · Bolton at Home and others can help those organisations who are struggling to hit deadlines for completion of programmes. · The difficulty in hitting decency standards targets in the private sector is due in part to the low level of public investment and in part to the financial downturn. Solutions involve a far greater level of investment and channelling this through a tool-box of interventions that are customised to individual needs, capacity and aspiration. · The shift
away from the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) is ti · Bolton at Home has a number of good practice examples that we can share. Some of which are mentioned in Section 8.
1. What lessons can be learned from the Decent Homes programme? 1.1 The decent homes programme provided an absolutely essential influx of resources to reverse the under-investment on public sector stock that had occurred over the previous decades. So the first lesson to learn is not to repeat the same mistake of accumulating disrepair on this scale during the next decade. Without this the value of public sector housing and its wider reputation would have been hit very hard.
1.2 The biggest challenge we face is to ensure that, once having used up the one-off financial investment, there is sufficient future resources to maintain the stock at the levels that customers and any future investors should expect.
1.3 During the period
the demand for
1.4 That decent homes programmes are well-received by our customers who are more than willing to experience a degree of disruption if this means that their homes are being improved. This is especially noticeable amongst people who have been tenants for a considerable time. Therefore not surprisingly, we found that improving people's homes raised their satisfaction levels.
1.5 A greater sense of ownership is engendered amongst customers and, as the whole estate is involved, there is opportunity and reason for people to come together as a community. Here the lesson is that the decent homes programme brought more than just a physical improvement as it also provided the potential for community engagement, community cohesion and socio-economic development.
1.6 The improvements made to public sector stock shows up the poor condition of a significant number of former right to buys whose owners where either unwilling or unable to match the investment made in the public dwellings. Many of these are in such a bad condition as to stand out more starkly blighting their housing estates.
1.7 Most important lesson was that customers' expectations and aspirations for what decent homes should achieve go far beyond their own home. Their concerns spread to the conditions of neighbouring properties and to the wider environment. Further than the physical issues residents relate decent homes to decent communities. so are as equally concerned about social and economic aspects of their neighbourhoods. This mirrors what is being said in the National Conversation and should make us all think again as to what constitutes 'core' services and what should be covered in the minimum standards.
1.8 Greatest
consideration needs to be given to the actual state of the stock, (derived from
a quality stock condition survey) rather than the pursuit of standards. Whilst the work put in by the
1.9 Finally, on the technical side, one of the strongest lessons learned was that the state of kitchens and bathrooms should be included as major elements in deciding whether or not a dwelling meets the threshold for improvement.
2. Where targeted housing fails to reach the Decent Homes criteria by 2010, how should the backlog be addressed? 2.1
2.2 Our (and others) positive experience of delivering the decent homes programme may be used to help those who are struggling to meet deadlines. Obviously there are circumstances unique to organisations that prevents them from delivering by the deadline, but good practice in this area should be largely transferable.
3. Should minimum acceptable standards be amended to take account of environmental standards, fuel poverty and the estate? 3.1 The answer to this is an emphatic yes. The clearest lesson learned from the Decent Homes programme is that the decline of public sector housing, caused by under-investment may be checked by improving dwellings up to the presently prescribed decency standards, but can only be permanently reversed if those key socio-economic and environmental areas are also addressed as part of a 'decent communities' approach (or as the government describes it, as their 'place-making').
3.2 This is also a lesson learned from past mistakes where improvement of stock (public or private) had not taken place in tandem with place shaping. By incorporating these areas as part of the 'core offer' of regeneration, the Decent Homes programme would be making a profound statement as to what is considered a minimum necessity and, therefore, worthy of mainstream funding.
4. Do management organisations - councils, including via ALMOs, and housing associations - need to change? Will they have sufficient funds? 4.1 There is no doubt that housing management organisations will have to change if they have any hope in meeting the anticipated cost of ensuring that stock is kept within decency standards. Indeed it is under the present conditions (without the one-off injection of Decent Homes money) that insufficient resources were created that caused the disrepair problem in the first place. Further, if the case for extending the criteria for what constitutes a decent home is accepted (and add to this the increase in stock to meet demand), then there will be an even greater burden of resources to be found in the future.
4.2 Housing management organisations need to be given more freedoms to operate as a business without losing accountability or being less open to public scrutiny. This means being able to release some of the present value held in the stock to finance continuing and future improvement and maintenance costs. It may also be a possibility that housing organisations could grow their businesses in other directions and use any profits gained to subsidise their housing stock.
4.3 Housing management organisations, obviously, rely heavily on raising rent income to raise funds for keeping dwellings up to decency standards. There is however, a limit to what to we can and should set rent levels at. It would seem inequitable to raise them dramatically to market rent levels as this would disadvantage many of our customers on limited incomes. Whilst some changes and freedoms are needed there should always be some constraints on rent charges. But by imposing this there has to be a contingent obligation placed on the public exchequer to provide some reasonable support to allow organisations to meet their additional social responsibilities in respect of providing affordable rents. An obligation not placed upon those private sector organisations who have the option to charge a market rent.
5. What are the implications for decent housing standards of the Government's proposal, currently out for consultation, to move to a more devolved system of housing finance? 5.1 Whilst being supportive of much contained within the proposals, such as the aim to create self-financing housing organisations supported by a much lighter regulated environment that is much more devolved from central control, there are a number of concerns in relation to maintaining decent homes standards.
5.2 There seems a misapprehension about what constitutes the core service. We contend that the wider interpretation of what a decent homes standard should cover means that these additional elements are core, a point not recognised in the consultation document.
5.3 Under the present
system there are local authorities who pay surpluses into the HRA and others,
such as
5.4 As previously mentioned, the proposal fails to give sufficient importance to the actual stock condition and the significant differences is levels of affluence across the country.
6. How should Decent Homes target for private sector homes occupied by vulnerable people be taken forward? 6.1 There is a very real challenge in bringing private sector housing up to decency standard to replicate the successful way this has been achieved with the public stock. Not least that, private sector house condition surveys notwithstanding, our detailed information base is nowhere near as accurate as that of our own stock. Further, the very nature of being vulnerable suggests that the potential customer is less able/likely to engage with the organisations who could help them.
6.2 Behind all this is
the perception that there are insufficient resources made available to meet the
demand should we be able to identify it in as much detail as we have in the
public sector. This is particularly
acutely felt in the
6.3 The following way forward is suggested: · Increase not decrease the amount of public sector investment into housing renewal. · Encourage greater accuracy of information on private sector disrepair. · Extend the minimum standards to include those advocated earlier for the public sector. · Develop a tool-box approach that provides for options not just around the physical works but also on finding the most suitable financial package for the individual vulnerable customer (with any support they might need from other agencies). · Target works, whenever possible, within wider housing renewal programmes. · Sooner
rather than later the private rented sector should be brought under the
7. Are adequate arrangements in place for the future of regulation of minimum acceptable housing standards? 7.1 There are adequate
arrangements in place as the · The 'devil
may be in the detail' as to how the · The extension of what should constitute minimum decency standards, as proposed earlier, often shifts into areas where simple outputs (such as proportion of rent collected) is of less importance. There is a need to develop more qualitative measurement tools - possibly through social accounting techniques. · These are
minimum standards and the
8. Are there local examples of innovative best practice with wider post-2010 applicability?
8.1 BH has a number of examples of best practice these include:
Customer Involvement · Design and Specification Group - Customers, councillors, board members, staff and partners meet on a quarterly basis to review the works specification and design issues. · Setting up of Neighbourhood Panels and Neighbourhood Champions has helped inform customers of how the Capital Improvement Programme is produced and how customers can influence it. This has now been superseded by the development of Neighbourhood Management Areas where regeneration activity is directed through staff working at the local level directly with customers. The Partnering process - · Sharing knowledge has resulted in reducing costs and improving procedures to improve efficiencies. An example of this has been demonstrated within the In House kitchen and bathroom teams improving their turnaround time and profitability after HT Forest had shared their procedures. · A joint procurement exercise has reduced material costs. Shared Liaison Officers · The liaison function is a key element of the success of planned improvement work. Regular meetings between partner companies have resulted in improved liaison, improved customer satisfaction and greater customer involvement. Great Estates leading to Transforming Estates · Great Estates was tackled the environmental works excluded from decent homes and involved customers making choices over layouts and influencing budget spend. Dedicated budgets empowered to customers · Through customer involvement several budgets within the Capital Improvement Programme were devolved to customers e.g. Elderly Services budget, Neighbourhood Panel budget.
September 2009
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